I think what really spoke to me during the presentations was the power of music in setting the mood and engaging the learner. I personally felt much more relaxed and eager to stay on task during the presentations with music. I was researching on-line and found that music is beneficial to learners in many ways from memory recall to increased productivity.
This is an important reminder for me, as I am hoping on being placed in primary next practicum, where the young ones are learning a lot of new concepts and are open to singing and listening to music. I've already learned a fair number of songs from my daughter's few years in primary, including "The Doubles Rap" and the "Even Song" for grade 1 Math. As soon as I get my placement, I am going to look into to grade appropriate songs to help my learners learn and have fun too.
Great resources, Cheyenne! I'm glad you began to see a purpose for the blogging. Next year, I will give clearer criteria for classmates to read each other's blogs as well - so much learning was shared here but some excellent posts were not viewed by anyone but me and the author. Also, next year I will work harder to keep up with commenting on the posts regularly - I do know from research that the instructor's participation is important, although I knew that I would not be able to keep up with reading and commenting on every post. I hoped people would see the great potential to share images for visual art as well as drama, dance, and musical performances with technology - the potential for this new blend of technology and arts that has been made possible because of the internet and smartboards will be limited, I think, only by teachers' awareness of its importance as well as technical skills. So often it is the technology that is emphasized in 21st century learning, when I think appreciation of the arts as a vehicle for learning and expressing learning is what is really important - technology is just the tool for greater accessiblity to a much broader range of human expression for learning. So...hmmm...maybe I should have shared more of this as "learning intentions"?!
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